A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.s3.2

c20.s3.2

There was a Christian community at St Thomas Mount, but no authentic evidence of its condition is forthcoming before Marco Polo (1293) who first reports the story of the martyrdom of St Thomas on the Mount, but the shrine on the Greater Mount was visited by Hindus and Muslims as well as by the Christians themselves. Thirty years after Marco Polo heard the story of St Thomas, Friar Odoric found some fifteen houses of Nestorians beside the church, but the church itself was filled with idols. A century later Conti reckoned a thousand Nestorians in the city; yet early in the sixteenth century Barbosa found the church in ruins, with a Muslim fakir charged to keep a lamp in it.